The title of this unit "1066 and all that" is an allusion to the humorous
book by Walter C. Sellar and Robert J. Yeatman published in 1930. In their
half-serious way the authors describe the Norman Conquest as "a Good Thing,
as from this time onwards England stopped being conquered and thus was
able to become top nation" (p. 17). Be this as it may, the Norman Conquest
is the historical starting point of the ME period and the date of 1066
is usually taken as the dividing line between the Early and High Middle
Ages.

The Norman Conquest

Edward ‘the Confessor’, who became king in 1042, was the last representative
of the West-Saxon royal family on the English throne. When he died in
1066, he left no immediate heir, which raised the problematic question
of his succession. The most likely candidates were Harold, son of Godwin,
the powerful earl of Wessex, and William, duke of Normandy. Edward had
married Godwin’s daughter so that the earl’s family were in a position
to regard themselves as rightful claimants to the English throne. However,
Edward was half-Norman (by his mother Emma) and had been brought up in
Normandy; thus, relations to the continent had always been very strong
during his reign. Furthermore, Norman sources claimed that in 1064, or
perhaps early 1065, Harold visited William in Normandy as Edward’s ambassador,
to swear an oath of fealty.

Who wants to be a ... king?

William I
(1066-87)

â

William II
(1087-1100)

â

Henry I
(1100-35)

âStephen of Blois
(1135-54)

Such was the state of affairs when the king died on 6 January 1066. Harold
immediately brought forward his claim to become king of England, supported
by the archbishop of Canterbury, who was also present at the king’s deathbed
and confirmed that the king had given succession to Harold in his last
hours. Yet, the new king was threatened not only by William, but also
by Harold Hardrada, king of Norway. In the end it was William who had
all the luck. Although high winds made it impossible for him to embark
his troops in Normandy and make his journey to England, it was just this
weather condition which blew the king of Norway and his troops to the
north of England. Harold successfully defeated the Norwegians at Stamford
Bridge near York, only to learn that, in the meantime, William had crossed
the Channel and had landed in the heart of his earldom. He moved south
with great speed, taking only a small portion of the exhausted forces
he had at Stamford Bridge.

On 14 October, the English and Norman armies met near Hastings. Harold’s
forces gathered on the crest of a hill and formed a wall of shields. The ensuing
battle lasted all day, and the English position was very strong at first.
But, sections of Harold’s army seem to have been enticed down the slope in
pursuit of real or feigned retreats of the Normans, and then cut off and overwhelmed.
Thus, gradually the English troops were broken up although the centre held
until dusk. It all came to an end, however, when Harold was killed. William
quickly advanced to Dover and then to Canterbury, where he received the submission
of Winchester. But it was mainly London where the core of the English resistance
had gathered. William, therefore, had the city encircled, leaving a trail
of devastation until the English nobles finally met him and offered their
fealty. He was acclaimed king in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066.

William I
(1066-1087)

The Battle of Hastings
Bayeux Tapestry:
Harold’s death

The consequences of the Norman Conquest can hardly be underestimated.
They had their effect on all aspects of life, from the influence of the
Norman-French language spoken by the new rulers on the further development
of English, the nearly complete effacement of the Anglo-Saxon ruling class
in both the secular and religious sphere, to new administrative, legal,
social, and cultural phenomena.

The Doomsday Book

Survey of England (1086)

In order to strengthen his authority and to have his kingdom’s wealth
registered in a systematic way, William I gave orders to compile a great
survey of all the landed possessions in England in 1086. Groups of royal
officers were sent out conducting public inquiries and thus listing all
feudal estates in written form. The various pieces of information were
arranged by counties, and within each county, according to the possessions
and tenures of the major secular and ecclesiastical landholders.

Eventually, the officers had gathered all the relevant information according
to the values and resources of each county’s manors thus providing the
king with a reliable assessment of taxes due to the crown. What is more,
the list of all the feudal estates gave William the means of exacting
oaths of allegiance from all his tenants and sub-tenants. The Doomsday
Book is undoubtedly one of the greatest administrative achievements of
the Middle Ages. Today, the manuscripts are preserved in the Public Record
Office in London.

Around the middle of the 12th century, the Norman dynasty
was supplanted by the Plantagenets in England. Henry II and his queen
Eleanor of Aquitaine ruled over a cross-Channel empire which reached from
the North of England to the Pyrenees. From then on, English social and
cultural life was not only influenced by Norman, but to a much higher
degree by central French models. In the following chapters, we will present
to you the reigns of Stephen of Blois, the last Norman king of England,
and of Henry II, the first Plantagenet, as prominent representatives of
12th-century English history.

The Reign of Stephen of Blois (1135-54)

Stephen of Blois (c.1097-1154), king of England from 1135 to 1154, was
the third son of Stephen, count of Blois and Chartres, and Adela, daughter
of William the Conqueror. He was brought up in the household of his uncle
Henry I of England. In 1127, and again in 1133, he was among a number
of English magnates whom Henry I persuaded or forced to take an oath of
fealty to his daughter the empress Matilda as heir to the throne. This
served further to recognize the hereditary right of her son, Henry of
Anjou (Plantagenet). This procedure was necessary because a ruler who
was female and, above that, married to the count of Anjou was repugnant
to the Normans. Consequently, upon the death of Henry I (December 1, 1135),
despite their oaths of fealty, many of the bishops and great lords of
England gave Stephen a warm welcome when he speedily crossed the Channel
and was subsequently crowned at Westminster in December 1135. He had easily
won the support of the citizens of London, of his brother Henry of Blois,
bishop of Winchester, and of the enormously influential Bishop Roger of
Salisbury.

How to become the King of England

Civil war

For some time, things went rather smoothly, but in 1137 Stephen missed
an opportunity of winning Normandy from Matilda and her husband. In 1138
Robert of Gloucester, Matilda’s half brother, took up arms in her support.
Matilda came to England in September 1139 and quickly made the West country
an Angevin stronghold. What followed was a long civil war (particularly
hard fought in 1141-44) which brought great misery and devastation to
the country. In the Peterborough version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
this period was portrayed as "19 winters during which Christ and his saints
slept". At last, a compromise was reached between the opposing parties,
which ensured the succession of Matilda’s son, Henry of Anjou (Plantagenet),
to the throne after Stephen’s death. This solution was generally welcomed
and when Stephen died on October 25, 1154, a new period of strong monarchic
government began with the accession of Henry Plantagenet.

Henry II (1154-1189)

Henry II (b.1133) was one of the most powerful rulers in western Europe
at the time. In 1150, his father Geoffrey Plantagenet transferred the
duchy of Normandy to Henry, and in 1151, he added Anjou. In 1152, Henry’s
marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine brought him her rich duchy as his third
great acquisition in France. After King Stephen had recognised him as
his heir, he eventually became king of England in 1154.

Henry succeeded peacefully to the English throne, meeting no resistance from
an aristocracy tired of fighting after the long civil war that had been instigated
by the claims to the throne of both Stephen and Matilda. He quickly restored
the powers of the monarchy and reclaimed royal rights as they had been before
Stephen’s reign. His contemporaries were seemingly impressed by his powerful
and vigorous personality. He was constantly on the move around his vast dominions
in England and France, his household always one step behind him. He even extended
his power to Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, thus ranging high among medieval
European rulers as regards his range of activities and his degree of lasting
success.

Henry also showed an interest in scholarly and intellectual pursuits;
he read books regularly, and, according to the chronicler Walter Map,
understood all the languages from the coast of France to the River Jordan.
It is known, however, that he normally spoke in French or Latin. Yet,
in the field of literary and cultural activities, he was by far surpassed
by his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Born in 1122, Eleanor was the eldest child and heiress of William X, duke
of Aquitaine. She was married to the young Louis VII of France in 1137,
but they were divorced in 1152. She had already met Henry, who was 11
years her junior, before her separation from Louis and seems to have fallen
in love with him immediately. They married in 1153 and this allowed her
to found her own literary court where she surrounded herself with troubadours
and artists from her southern territories. Under her patronage, the ideals
and codes of courtly love began to emerge. It was particularly her son
Richard ‘the Lionhearted’ who inherited her love of music and poetry,
and her daughter Eleanor took the characteristic Angevin style of building
with her to Castile.

Eleanor of Aquitaine

Besides Eleanor, another strong-willed member of his immediate surrounding
had a lasting impact on the reign of Henry II: Thomas Becket. Born at
London in 1118 to a Norman merchant family, he was educated at Merton
Priory and became a member of the household of the archbishop of Canterbury.
His administrative talents marked him out for a rapid career so that in
1154, he was appointed archdeacon of Canterbury and, later that year,
Henry II made him Chancellor of England. Their close friendship lasted
eight years in which Thomas played an active part in the affairs of the
state, supporting the king in his conflicts with the Church. Henry, in
return, made him archbishop of Canterbury in 1161, thus granting him the
highest clerical office in England.

Thomas à Becket

Then it happened: torn between demands put on him by his secular responsibilities
and his religious vocation, Becket opted for the latter and resigned the chancellorship.
As a representative of the Church he became Henry’s most formidable opponent,
claiming that he would obey only one lord: God. They fought their most bitter
fights about the powers of the Church courts, which Henry wanted to see reduced
and partly transferred to secular courts. Becket, however, refused to submit
to the king’s wishes, and after a final stormy confrontation at a council
of barons and bishops, Becket fled to France, where he appealed for protection
to the pope.

Becket

versus

Henry II

Casket with relics of Thomas Becket

For six years Becket remained in exile, but returned to England in 1170
after a compromise had been reached. Yet, his very first actions - the
excommunication of the archbishop of York and the two bishops who had
assisted at the young King Henry’s coronation - enraged Henry to such
a degree that four of his knights travelled to Canterbury to take revenge.
In the late afternoon of 29 December, Thomas Becket was assassinated in
his own cathedral, provoking a tide of indignation across the whole of
Europe. Within a few months, many miracles were reported at his tomb,
and less than three years after his death, he was canonized by Pope Alexander
III in February 1173. During the following year, Henry did public penance
at his adversary’s shrine - a shrine which was to become one of the principal
centres of pilgrimage of medieval Christendom. Thomas Becket had become
the most influential martyr in the history of the English Church.

Nonetheless, Henry’s hold on his vast empire remained secure; he even
stood at the height of his power in the early 1170s. By this time, he
had already decided that, after his death, his dominions should be partitioned
between his three eldest sons. Henry was to have his father’s inheritance,
namely Anjou, Normandy, and England; Richard was to have his mother’s
inheritance, Aquitaine; and Geoffrey was to have the acquisition, Brittany.
Later, he ruled that John, the youngest, should have Ireland. Yet, things
did not go as smoothly as he had anticipated: his sons became rebellious,
seeing that their father still retained all real power in his own hands.
The deaths of two of his sons, the young King Henry in 1183 and Geoffrey
in 1186, did not do away with Henry’s problems. It was obvious that he
preferred John and this alarmed Richard, who formed an alliance with the
French king Philip II Augustus. This brought Henry to his knees and, defeated,
the old king died at Chinon on 6 July 1189.

Rebellious sons:

Henry II
(1154-1189)

â

Richard I
(1189-1199)

â

John I
(1199-1216)

12th century folks you
should know about:

During Stephen's reign
Civil War caused a lot of misery

Henry II one of the most powerful
European rulers, wife: Eleanor of Aquitaine (courtly love)

The 13th-century is called "the greatest of centuries" by
some scholars, because it is the era of outstanding cultural achievements.
In 1209, Cambridge University was founded as a second English educational
centre after Oxford (1169). In the 1220s, the Dominican and Franciscan
friars came to England and were immediately successful in the towns and
at the universities. This flourishing of cultural and educational life
and the fact that only three kings, John, Henry III, and Edward I, ruled
the kingdom during this century might lead to the assumption that the
epoch was marked by peace and stability. On the contrary, in terms of
politics, the reigns of John and Henry are characterized by a constant
conflict between royal authority and rebellious magnates. Early in the
century (1215) the baronial party won a decisive victory when they forced
king John to sign the Magna Charta at Runnymede.

A century worth remembering

Magna Charta

A dark period

By many historians the reign of king John is seen as the darkest period
in medieval English history. In 1204 he lost Normandy to the French and
in 1209 he was excommunicated by Pope Innocent III, who put the realm
under the interdict at the same time, which meant that the king and his
people were excluded from the sacraments and the churchmen from all ecclesiastical
privileges. King John’s conflict with Rome culminated in 1213, when he
had to pay homage to the Pope and held his kingdom as a fief of the Roman
Church.

This deplorable state of affairs led to a serious rebellion of the nobility
and the great magnates against the king in 1214. Eventually, John was
compelled to sign the Magna Charta, acknowledging the constitutional framework
of his father Henry II, which had defined the limits of royal prerogatives.
A draft version was signed at Runnymede on 15 June 1215. Some days later,
the final form was issued as a freely granted royal charter. This version
was re-issued by John’s successor, Henry III, in 1216, 1217, and in 1225
in its final version, which is still valid in English statute law.

What is the fuss about?

The provisions of the Magna Charta guaranteed the liberties of the Church
and the privileges of the barons and the citizens of London. A fixed royal
court was to be held at Westminster as a constant institution of appeal
to royal justice. The Great Charter comprises 63 clauses many of which
confirm individual liberties such as reasonable royal charges in cases
of inheritance or the protection of widows and wards against royal arbitrariness.

One of the outstanding achievements of the Magna Carta Libertatum
was the maxim that no one should be imprisoned, forfeit his lands,
or be exiled except by the judgement of his equals or common law. By these
and other clauses, the royal prerogative was considerably curbed and it
was foreseeable that king John’s successors would try to turn back the
wheel of history.

Individual liberties

Simon de Montfort’s death

In the long run, Magna Charta could not settle the conflict between the
Crown and the leading magnates of the kingdom. Open rebellion against
the king arose again in the years between 1258 and 1265, the so-called
Barons’ War. Under the leadership of Simon de Montfort, the king’s
brother-in-law, a coalition of barons tried to impose reforms on the king.
Both parties, the baronial and the royal, were successful in turns. In
1264, however, the barons resorted to arms and won against their own king
at Lewes. Only a year later, the king regained his power when he and his
son, the future king Edward I, decisively defeated the baronial party
at Evesham. Simon’s army was massacred at the battle and Simon himself
was killed.

The Coming of the Friars

The term ‘mendicant’ as used in religion denotes a person who renounces
the ownership of property and relies on the charity of others for his
daily needs. In the Christian Church, the use of the term is limited to
a member of a religious order that, in contrast to the monastic orders,
does not allow the ownership of property, not even in common, if taken
in its strictest sense.

Mendicant orders

Franciscans

&

Dominicans

In the 13th century, the two most influential mendicant orders
were founded: the Franciscans by St Francis of Assisi in 1210, and the
Dominicans by St Dominic in 1216. Within a generation of their founders’
deaths, the mendicant orders had spread all over Europe and into Asia,
and their friars numbered tens of thousands. Friaries were established
in all the great cities of western Europe, and in the universities, theological
chairs were held by Dominicans and Franciscans. Later in the 13th
century, the other great mendicant orders of Carmelites, Austin Friars,
and Servites arose, and lesser mendicant orders sprang up in all directions.
Because of this unchecked growth, the second Council of Lyons in 1274
decided to take necessary steps to suppress all orders except the ones
named above.

St Francis’ life-story is impressive. He was born in c. 1181 as the son of
a rich merchant of Assisi. He was brought up according to his rank and position
in society, but already in youth he experienced a period of indecision and
searching for the appropriate way of life. Finally, in 1206, he surrendered
all the material comforts of his home to become a beggar inspired by Jesus’
words that one should give up everything and follow him. He took care of the
lepers and others excluded from society, and he showed love and

Franciscans

honour
to even the humblest of parish priests. Very quickly, disciples began to gather
round him and Francis had to formulate the first rule of his ‘order’, the Primitive
Rule, which was taken to the pope. Yet, the order grew even more, from a
dozen in 1210, into hundreds, perhaps thousands, and spread all over Christendom.
By 1212, one of his female followers, Clare, became the foundress of the second
order - the Poor Ladies or Poor Clares. The Franciscan order and its Rule were
officially accepted in the papal bull of Pope Honorius III (1223), which can
still be seen in the treasury of the basilica of S. Francesco at Assisi. Francis’
last years were clouded by illness and he died on October 3, 1226. Already in
1228 he was canonized by Pope Gregory IX, who had been a close friend and supporter.

Dominicans

St Dominic (c. 1170-1221) began his career as a Castillian nobleman and priest.
He was involved in royal embassies to Languedoc, a stronghold of the heretical
movement known as the Albigensians or Cathars. Yet, Dominic could not fully
agree with the methods employed during the Albigensian Crusade (1208) because
he preferred theological discussion and the example of personal poverty to
counter the Albigensians rather than the use of force. Accordingly, he founded
an order based on the principles of mendicant poverty, learning, and preaching
which was confirmed by

Pope Honorius III in 1216. The Dominicans received a rigorous theological training
in order to teach the laity, who, they feared, might otherwise easily fall prey
to heretical propaganda. The order spread rapidly, focusing particularly upon
university towns such as Paris (1217), Bologna (1218), and Oxford (1221). Among
the many outstanding Dominican scholars one could name Albertus Magnus and Thomas
Aquinas. It is also in the field of scholarship that the Dominican order differed
most substantially from the Franciscans, who did not consider scholarship to
be an important part of their vocation. Indeed, in the beginning, Francis had
not even allowed his disciples to possess any books. Also in contrast to the
Franciscans, the Dominicans were particularly active in combating heresy, so
much so, that the medieval Inquisition is often described as the Dominican Inquisition,
although only a minority was involved. From the 14th century onwards,
despite missions in Africa, India and China, the order declined in importance.

The enormous success and popularity of the mendicant orders was mainly
due to two reasons: the widespread criticism of the corruption and inefficiency
of the Church establishment, and the spiritual demands put forward by
an ever increasing and articulate urban laity. The wealth of monks and
secular clerics, particularly those belonging to the higher ranks of the
clergy, had brought disrepute to the Church, and more and more voices
could be heard preaching the practice of austere poverty and a return
to the simple life of Christ and his apostles. In addition, the rapidly
growing city populations were in dire need of priests and the spiritual
and moral guidance they were expected to provide.

Poverty as a Virtue

Quenching the thirst

The organization of the Church, which had been based on a rural, parochial
system obviously could not cope with the changes brought about by urban
structures and lifestyle. So, when the friars established themselves in
the towns - often in the poorest localities - and brought religion to
the destitute and outcasts of society, they satisfied a need which the
parochial clergy could not.

Yet, the friars not only responded to the new needs of the age, but also
to its new ideas: religious, intellectual, artistic. A new wave of mysticism
had swept over Europe, fixing its attention mainly on the humanity of
Christ, whose suffering as a human came to the forefront and was increasingly
depicted by artists and craftsmen. The Franciscans in particular stressed
the human nature of Jesus, who could thus more easily serve as a role
model. Likewise, a new intellectual era had begun with the foundation
of universities and the scholastic movement, and the friars actively participated
in these institutions and discussions.

New ideas

From rags to riches

Despite the enormous success and influence of the mendicant movement
in the 13th century, the maintaining of the ideals they propagated proved
unworkable in practice. The orders grew rich (many people left them their
property in their wills), a stricter organizational structure with hierarchical
features had to be introduced, and many of the original ideals came to
be betrayed by corrupt friars. This explains why, in the 14th century,
much social satire centres on friars and the tricks they played on people
in order to extort money from them.

The 13th century and things
you should remember:

The Magna Charta, which
John was forced to sign in 1215, defined the limits of royal prerogatives

The
establishment of the 2 most important mendicant orders: TheFranciscans
(meek and helpful) & the Dominicans (learned and influential)

Mendicant
orders were popular because they helped the urban poor people and were not
corrupted by greed - in the beginning.

In many respects, the 14th century can be seen as an age of crises and
catastrophes. The Black Death, for instance, decimated the population
from 1348 onwards, and the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 is an outstanding
example of inner strife and social unrest as an immediate result of the
economic crisis. The series of military campaigns to France, later called
the 100 Years’ War, were expensive and aggravated the tight financial
conditions of the Crown. On the other hand, the 14th century is an age
of remarkable cultural achievements. It is the era of the great ME poets,
Chaucer, Gower, and Langland; in English gothic architecture, it is the
epoch of the decorated and later of the perpendicular styles; and it is
the time of the fullest refinement of the code of chivalry in England.
The higher aristocracy defined themselves as the social elite by manifesting
this claim in splendid feasts and tournaments and by the foundation of
knightly orders such as the Order of the Garter. In order to illustrate
some of these aspects we selected the Great Plague and its consequences
and the first part of the 100 Years’ War as topics of our presentation.

14th Century Summary

The Black Death

There were three great plague epidemics during the Middle Ages: in the 6th,
7th & 14th centuries.
The earliest epidemic spread from Ethiopia and reached the British Isles 541-6.
But it affected mainly south-east Europe and the Middle East, where people
tried to escape from the deadly illness by fleeing from the already highly
depopulated cities into the desert mountains. Most waves of the 7th century
affected the eastern Mediterranean, but the more severe plagues of 655-700
spread extensively in both the Islamic countries and western Europe. Northern
England was affected in 664, 675-6 and 678.

In Ireland, the last two waves were known as the Children’s Plague, as they
affected predominantly those born after the preceding epidemic. In the first
half of the 8th century, further waves affected south-east Europe and the
Middle East, but north-west Europe remained plague-free.In the 1340s, the
plague spread again, this time from Central Asia. In 1246, it appeared at
Kaffa from whence it spread rapidly by sea and by land to most parts of Europe.
By 1348, it had reached Constantinople, Italy and France; England was affected
in the winter of 1348/9 and by 1350, it had swept across Germany, Poland and
Scandinavia. It is this pandemic which is now known as the Black Death. Once
again, there were successive waves, continuing, for example, in England until
the Great Plague of 1665. The plague caused the deaths of millions of people,
leaving some areas totally depopulated. In England, the Black Death reduced
the population by at least one third. In 1348, just before the onset of the
great plague, the inhabitants totalled 3,700,000. The appalling death rate
of the following three decades reduced that number to 2,200,000. One index
by which to measure the deadliness of the bubonic plague is that of life expectancy
at birth. This is calculated to have been 31 years in the final decades of
the 13th century, but fell to 17 years in the period 1348-75.

It is striking that there usually is a break of about 11 years between
the successive plague waves but the cause of this phenomenon is unknown.
The most important factor seems to be meteorological. It is known that
worldweather patterns had been upset by volcanic darkness for 15 months
in the years 536-7, so that by 539 famine affected Constantinople, despite
the prosperity of the Byzantine Empire up to 535. Likewise in the 1340s,
even Italy was suffering economically, whereas in north-west Europe wet
seasons would in any case have led to a demographic crisis had plague
mortality not intervened.

Mystery?!

Social effects

The Jews, who were blamed for transmission of the disease, were persecuted
and massacred. The fear of death led to the growth of fanatical religious
groups such as the Flagellants. The effect of the plague on agrarian society
was complex, leading initially to attempts to reimpose feudal rights and
services, and contributing to outbreaks of violence (for example the Peasants’
Revolt in England). But owing to the scarcity of labour, wages rose and
humble tenant farmers and cottagers left the land and migrated to the
towns and boroughs by the thousands. By the end of the 15th century, defections
of this sort as well as the commutations of labour service by money payments
led to the virtual disappearance of villeinage in England. The prominence
of the now greatly augmented middle class, already prosperous and quite
capable of making its influence felt, marks the end of feudal society.

Boccaccio’s Decamerone represents a literary response to the plague,
although there are almost no examples of true plague art before 1400.
Pestschriften were issued regularly with advice as to treatment,
but comets and planetary conjunctions were often blamed for the onset
of an epidemic.

Literary responses

The 100 Years’ War (Part I)

The date generally given to mark the beginning of the 100 Years’ War
is May 25, 1337, on that day, the French king, Philip VI, invaded the
duchy of Guienne in South Western France, which was held by the English
king, Edward III, as a feudal fief. However, the reasons for the following
series of military campaigns, truces, and peace treatises are more complex.
Since the times of William the Conqueror, the English monarchy had posed
a more or less serious threat to the French kings by the Norman and Plantagenet
control over large feudal fiefs in France. In the course of time, the
French kings had succeeded in regaining authority over those territories.
What is more, the French had always helped Scotland in the wars against
England, thus threatening the realm from the North. A further cause of
aggression between England and France was their rivalry for the trade
of Flanders and the control of the Channel. In other words, political
reasons, feudal disputes, and the striving for economic power were the
main causes of this series of wars which lasted until 1453.

How it came about

Edward II (1307-27)

â

Edward III (1327-77)

â

Richard II (1377-99)

On the surface, the immediate pretext for war was Edward III’s claim
to the French throne. Edward’s mother, Isabella of Valois, was the sister
of the French king Charles IV who died in 1328. Edward saw himself as
the legitimate heir of the French king, as he considered his lineage to
be more direct than that of Philip, who was a cousin to the deceased king.
The French maintained that the crown could not be inherited through the
female line. Therefore, the 100 Years’ War is not only a political conflict,
but also a dynastic contention between the House of Plantagenet and the
House of Valois.

What followed was not constant warfare, but rather a series of campaigns
and battles with long interruptions of diplomatic negotiations and truces.
The war can be divided into two phases: the first phase lasting from 1337
to 1386, and the second from 1414 to 1453. Within the period from the
1380s to 1414 there was no actual fighting at all.

War & Peace 1st
phase: 1337-1386 2nd phase: 1414-1453

In 1338, Edward III immediately reacted to Philip’s seizure of Guienne
by declaring himself King of France. He invaded Northern France and, in
1340, he won a decisive naval battle near Sluys in the Scheldt estuary.
The French lost almost their entire fleet, as more than 200 ships were
captured by the English. This first major battle of the 100 Years’ War
resulted in the English control of the Channel in the following decades,
in which the French navy was no longer a threat to England. The French
king had to agree to a truce of three years, which Edward, however, broke,
when he invaded France again in 1345.

The Battle of Sluys (1340)

The Battle of Crécy was the first great English land victory over
the French. On August 26, 1346, Edward led his army of less than 10,000
men to the Northern French village, Crécy, near the Somme. The
English archers mowed down more than a dozen waves of assaulting French
knights. At Crécy, the revolutionary English way of fighting was
successful for the first time in this war. A combination of men-at-arms
and archers awaited the assault of the French cavalry. It was especially
the archers who inflicted terrible losses on the French army. A trained
longbow-man could shoot ten arrows a minute with great accuracy over a
distance of 200 yards. The French army was virtually drowned in a shower
of English arrows.

A new way
of winning
battles

After Crécy, military action ceased until 1355 when Edward the
Black Prince, the king’s eldest son, captured Bordeaux and raided Southern
France for several months. It was also the Black Prince who won the second
great English victory of the 100 Years’ War at the Battle of Poitiers
on September 19, 1356. Philip’s successor, King John II of France, and
the Duke of Burgundy were captured and led to London where they were held
in chivalrous captivity until a ransom was paid. In 1360, peace negotiations
were at last successful and laid down in the Treaty of Bretigny. The ransom
to be paid for the French king was 500,000 pounds. The sum was never completely
paid before John II died in English captivity in 1364. The other clauses
of the treaty gave possession of large areas territories in France to
the English Crown.

John’s son, Charles V, renewed the war against the English lands in France
in 1369. Together with their Castillian allies, the French forces successfully
harried the English territories in South Western France. Military failures,
and above all economic problems at home, found the English on the losing
side. The war was expensive and the Crown’s chest notoriously empty. The
economic consequences of the plague and heavy taxation led to a tense
political situation in England. After the death of the Black Prince in
1376 and that of his father in 1377, the young king Richard II and his
regents were no longer capable of waging war against France. The French
gradually regained control over the territories they had given up at Bretigny
and the English were too weak to put up any form of effective resistance.
Fighting ended in 1386 and a truce of 30 years was signed in 1396.

War, Exhaustion, Truce

Trouble in the 14th century

The black death rages
among the population.

The Peasant's revolt, due to an economic
crisis, shakes the country. (1381)

The 100 Years'
War, which had peroids of truce.

Pleasant: Chaucer, Langland and
Gower lived and wrote in this century.

The topics we have selected to present the 15th century, the
second phase of the 100 Years’ War and the Wars of the Roses, might give
the impression that military action is the main characteristic feature
of late medieval English history. Although it is true that these wars
form the framework of the political history of the time, one should not
forget that the 15th century is also the period of the invention
of the printing press, the discovery of America, and many other achievements
which make this century a period of transition between the Middle Ages
and the Early Modern period.

From the Middle Ages into
Early Modernism

The 100 Years’ War (Part II)

Henry IV (1399-1413)

During the reign of Henry IV, the first Lancastrian king, there was no
fighting at all between England and France. The English king was too much
occupied in securing his own position and, what is more, the clauses of
the treaty of 1396 had provided a truce of 30 years. Besides, the domestic
situation in France was not appropriate for a foreign war. Civil war and
the permanent conflict between the House of Burgundy and the House of
Orleans weakened the French monarchy.

Twelve years before the truce was intended to end, Henry V resumed the
war. In 1414, he renewed the English claim to the French throne and invaded
France in 1415. He seized the French port Harfleur and was intercepted
by the French on his retreat to Calais. Henry’s 6,000 men faced about
25,000 French knights and soldiers near the village of Agincourt. Against
all odds, the English won this decisive battle of the second phase of
the 100 Years’ War because of their lightly equipped archers who had the
advantage over their heavily armoured enemies in the rain and mud of the
battlefield.

Henry V (1413-22)

&

The Battle of Agincourt (1415)

This victory paved the way for Henry’s success in the following years.
Supported by the House of Burgundy, he took Rouen and Paris and controlled
all of France north of the Loire. In 1420, a peace treaty was signed at
Troyes virtually fulfilling the English aims of war. The French king,
Charles VI declared his son illegitimate and recognized Henry V as his
heir and regent. Henry married the French king’s daughter, Catherine of
Valois, and returned triumphantly to England in 1421. During his attempt
to fight the French opposition he died at Vincennes in 1422 leaving his
cross-Channel kingdom to his one-year-old son, Henry VI.

Treaty of Troyes (1420)

The French king died in the same year and the dauphin claimed the throne
as Charles VII and was recognized south of the River Loire. In the north,
a regent ruled the kingdom in the name of Henry VI. The English invaded the
south of France and besieged the city of Orléans in 1428, which was
to become the turning point of the
100 Years’ War.

Henry VI (1422-61, 1470-71)

Joan of Arc (1412-31)

Under Joan of Arc, La Pucelle, the French forces freed Orléans,
defeated the English and drove them north. Charles VII was crowned king
at Reims in the same year. Joan of Arc was later captured by the Burgundians
and sold to the English. In 1431, she was burnt at the stake as a relapsed
heretic at Rouen. Her royal patron, Charles VII, successively regained
control over the territories which his father had conceded to the English
by skilful diplomatic and military action. In 1435, he entered into an
alliance with the House of Burgundy, thus smashing the support of the
English and took Paris in the following year.

From 1449 onwards, the French regained nearly all the territories they
had lost to the English in the 1420s. In 1450/51, they took Normandy and
Guienne. Only Calais remained under English control when the war practically
came to its end in 1453 without any peace treaty. The English claim to
the French throne had ended forever.

Last phase to 1453

The Wars of the Roses (1455-85)

Lancaster

vs.

York

The name ‘Wars of the Roses’ is used to designate the dynastic conflict
between the House of Lancaster and the House of York which resulted in
military action and civil wars from 1455 to 1485. Both houses were of
Plantagenet origin in that their representatives were direct descendants
of Edward III. The king’s fourth son, John of Gaunt, became duke of Lancaster
in 1362 and his sons and grandsons ruled England from 1399 to 1461 and
from 1470 to 1471. John’s younger brother, Edmund of Langley, was created
duke of York in 1385 and his descendants became kings as Edward IV and
V and Richard III. This dynastic struggle was later called ‘The Wars of
the Roses’, since the emblems of the white and red rose were attributed
to the Yorkist and Lancastrian branches of the House of Plantagenet.

The war broke out in 1455 as the result of Henry VI’s insanity and, above
all, because of the losses in France. The Yorkist opponents to the Lancastrian
king won the first battles at St Albans (1455) and Northampton (1460)
under the leadership of Richard Plantagenet, duke of York. But in the
same year, York was defeated and killed at Wakefield.

Edward IV (1461-70, 1471-83)

In 1461, Richard’s son was acclaimed king by Parliament and crowned as
Edward IV, the first Yorkist king of England. He defeated Henry VI and
his queen Margaret, who escaped to Scotland until 1464 when they returned
to England. Henry was captured in the next year and imprisoned in the
Tower of London. Inner strife within the Yorkist faction brought Henry
back to the throne in 1470 after Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, had
driven Edward IV into exile in Holland. Only one year later, he returned
with a large army and defeated his enemies at Barnet and Tewkesbury. Henry
was dethroned for a second time and sent again to the Tower, where he
died - probably murdered - in the same year.

Until his death in 1483, Edward’s rule was firmly established and his
kingdom began to prosper again. The first English printing press was established
at Westminster by William Caxton and silk manufacturing was introduced.
Upon Edward’s death, his brother Richard usurped the throne and had himself
crowned as Richard III. The legitimate heir, Edward V, a boy of twelve,
was imprisoned together with his brother in the Tower of London. The children
disappeared soon after Richard’s coronation, but whether he was guilty
of their murder is still a matter of dispute.

Richard III (1483-85)

Wars of the Roses

...

The End

Having no real chance of regaining sole power, the Lancastrians supported
Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, against the last Yorkist king. At the battle
of Bosworth Field in 1485, Richard III lost his life and his kingdom.
With Henry VII and the rise of the Tudor dynasty the Houses of York and
Lancaster were united by marriage, because Henry’s queen was Elizabeth,
daughter of Edward IV. Thus the Wars of the Roses resulted in a strengthened
Tudor monarchy: The financial resources and the political power of the
Crown had been increased considerably by the inner strife between the
old aristocratic houses. Very similar to the contemporary developments
in France, the English monarchy was on its way to absolutism.

The 15th century:

The 100 Years' War was continued
by Henry V, who was successful at claiming the French throne. (Treaty
of Troyes)

The French later reclaimed the
French throne (Charles VII and Joan of Arc)

The Wars of the Roses (1455-1485),
a dynastic conflict between the Houses Lancaster and York.

Do not forget that there were also
such things as the invention of the printing press and the discovery
of America

Two volumes of The Longman History of England comprise the period
of this unit, i.e.:
Frank Barlow. The Feudal Kingdom of England 1042-1216. London 1972.
B. Wilkinson. The Later Middle Ages in England, 1216-1485. London1969.

Very readable and richly illustrated are the publications of the ‘Chronicle
Series’ edited by Elizabeth Hallam:
The Plantagenet Chronicles. London1986.Chronicles of the Age of Chivalry. London1987.The Chronicles of the Wars of the Roses. London 1988.The Plantagenet Encyclopedia. London 1990.